I am feeling great now that this conversation has credentialed me as a US constitutional lawyer! Maybe I could get appointed to the Supreme Court when one of the oldies dies? Do I have to become a US citizen?
LanDroid wrote: ↑Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:06 pm
"Congress shall make no law..." really means "Congress, the states, and all other legislatures shall make no law..."
I was thinking, laws are only made to prevent things, not to allow them. Allowing prayer in schools does not require anyone to make a law. Maybe a law allowing abortion would have to prevent people from preventing abortion, and a law allowing government prayer would have to prevent people from preventing prayer? What would break the constitution would be if a legislature passed a law saying Christian prayer was compulsory. The point of "free exercise" is that people get to decide for themselves, without government saying they must or must not do something. Just chill out a bit on diversity. If a Hindu wants to pray occasionally at a predominantly Christian school, that should be fine. The balance is how to limit free speech that advocates hate or violence. You don’t want a Rwanda 1994 situation where school prayer and government radio are used to whip up genocide, to cite the extreme case. I know lots of Southern Baptists are racist and bigoted, but maybe allowing them to pray in school might encourage them to be more tolerant?
My view is that prayer is just a way to publicly articulate shared hopes and intentions, and setting this in a supernatural mythological framework is just a conventional form of language.
I respect that crazy extremists have to be kept in check, exactly what the US has not done with guns. I think the heavy-handed authoritarian banning of prayer is a big overplay by the secular modern liberal culture, a classic case of making the blood of the martyrs the seed of the church, as Tertullian put it. Hateful prayer should be severely limited.
LanDroid wrote: ↑Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:06 pm
although folks are able to freely express their faith, they do not have a right to control government and institutionalize their religion. Always keep in mind that no right is absolute. So again these clauses work together: without free exercise you could have a national religion, but if free exercise extends to enforcing a specific faith through government power, then we also will not have free exercise of religion. Bi-directional limitations are required.
What that means is that if school prayer organisers deny a platform to reasonable and respectful members of their community, they are in breach of the constitution. They don’t have to allow Satanists to publicly call for drinking chicken blood, or other vexatious abuse of the privilege of being granted a public audience, but if they have a lot of Catholic or Buddhist students and systematically deny them any right to share their prayers they are in breach. I think this can promote religious dialogue, since if atheists hear something they don’t like they should ideally have a forum to raise their concerns. The fact that atheists don’t want to pray is not reason to deny that right to others. This latest snowflake concept of “freedom from religion” is not something that stands up well to scrutiny.
LanDroid wrote: ↑Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:06 pm
That football coach's right to free religious expression has not been infringed. He can pray at home, in his car, silently in his office, at church, even from the pulpit. He could even invite the team to his home for prayers.
But Scotus agrees with your interpretation of that case. You win 50K points.
Where will this lead? Here are some questions.
- Do you imagine this ruling applies to only one football coach, only one field, or only one sport?
It opens the floodgates. Now the blessings of Almighty God will be invoked all over the place and no one will be able to stop it. It is such an irony that the US is such a religious country, with politicians always talking about God and praying, such as these examples
https://www.faithgateway.com/prayers-of ... r__j3ZBw2w
LanDroid wrote: ↑Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:06 pm
[*] See my previous paragraph starting with "Conservatives absolutely will not stop until school principals nation wide lead students in christian prayer..." Does this Scotus ruling apply only to public schools? Any reason it does not apply to universities?
It is entirely up to local decision as long as governments don’t make rules about it beyond normal restrictions on libel etc.
LanDroid wrote: ↑Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:06 pm
[*] Can state legislatures, city councils, or publicly owned corporations start requiring specific prayers at each meeting? Why not?
See my point above about excluding members of your community from right to pray in public at official events. Such exclusion would break the establishment rule. I think prayer at official events is something that will gradually evolve its own etiquette. In Australia we are evolving a new civic religion where every event is opened by a statement of respect for indigenous people.
If people say things that are bizarre and offensive under the cover of prayer, they may have a legal right to do so, but they will face the normal social opprobrium that such comments attract. If the legislature in Arkansas allows prayers calling for New Yorkers to believe in Young Earth Creationism, that will attract the disdain of liberals, but hey, it’s a free country. Better out than in. The resulting debate will educate people.
LanDroid wrote: ↑Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:06 pm
[*] Will these "freedoms" apply to any religion other than American style Christian Nationalism?
They would have to, or the organisation would be in breach of the constitution.
LanDroid wrote: ↑Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:06 pm
[*] Out of curiosity, how does your country operate in these areas? Do you have a "Church of Australia" like the "C of E?" Would you be comfortable if Queensland
established Southern Baptists or Scientology and restricted other faiths?
Australian governments open each day with the Lord’s Prayer, something that is under hostile attack from the Greens, who have a hysterical communist hatred toward forgiveness and other similar Christian ideas, as well as toward the Australian flag. As I mentioned we are also evolving a civic indigenous religion. The usual statement opening all public events is something like “we acknowledge and honour the indigenous people who have nurtured this place since time immemorial, and honour their elders, past, present and emerging.” That is not at all exclusive. Also, we had a big political debate about a section of the human rights act that bans offensive speech, something much more restrictive than the free for all in the US. That section still stands, after strenuous conservative effort to overturn it. And our libel laws make it far more dangerous to defame people in Australia than in the US.
It is interesting that the culture of a colony reflects its founding. Just as the US reflects the Pilgrim culture, Australia, settled in 1788, has more of a secular enlightenment ethos reflecting the prevailing views of that time. I think our patron saint is David Hume //sarc/irony//.
LanDroid wrote: ↑Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:06 pm
[*] To return to the topic of this thread, two Scotus rulings on prayer and abortion will escalate efforts to
establish a specific flavor of christianity.
What these rulings will do is return debate about these matters to the proper local level, instead of escalating them into national divisive political touchstones by authoritarian judicial federal regulation. It is far better that a free market of ideas be allowed to flourish, to limit the festering of resentment. Where policies are stupid and harmful, that will be exposed to the disinfectant of publicity. These states that have passed abortion trigger laws will fairly soon need to walk them back, I am sure.
My personal view on abortion is that prenatal screening should lead to abortion of all detected serious disabilities. The argument that congenital disability is a great part of human diversity just imposes awful pain on parents looking after a totally dependent child. I would also like to see greater encouragement of adoption in the case of healthy pregnancies that are unwanted, with ethical protocols to enable contact between genetic parents and their children.
Efforts to establish state religion will founder on the rock of explicit constitutional prevention. I think what will emerge is that positive prayers within a faith tradition will be fine, but prayers that whip up hate against others will face judicial limits.